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Green Prozac
(Philip Dawdy, Seattle Weekly, August 26, 2004)
Pot has helped thousands of cancer and AIDS patients, for example, contend with side effects of their illnesses and treatments. There is also evidence that marijuana works for some psychiatric disorders as well, principally depression and bipolar disorder. Among some people, pot is jokingly referred to as "green Prozac." . . . The problem is you can't legally take a toke for psychiatric diagnoses. . . . "I think cannabis has a lot of potential in the treatment of mental illness," says Lester Grinspoon, emeritus professor of psychiatry at the Harvard School of Medicine. He says that it can be an effective treatment for bipolar disorder and depression. . . . Grinspoon has, over the last three decades, been one of the few psychiatrists willing to speak publicly on mental marijuana. . . . My own anecdotal, ahem, experience is that pot does indeed boost my mood from the badlands of depression and lower me from the Mount Everests of mania. I have no idea why or how, nor do I especially care – I'm one of those people who find Prozac and its progeny to be barely effective and with enough nasty side effects to outweigh the benefits. But I'll never tell that to the Drug Enforcement Administration or drug czar John Walters. . . . Instead, I'll let the Israeli army speak for me. Two weeks ago, it announced that it would provide, on an experimental basis, medical marijuana to troops suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, another mental illness. Good enough for an army, good enough for me. . . . four years ago, the Washington Medical Quality Assurance Commission was petitioned to add mental illness to its list of approved uses of medical marijuana. The commission denied the request. It argued that there was no lock-solid scientific evidence that weed worked for mental illness. The odd thing is that it had approved pot for treatment of Alzheimer's, Krohn's disease, chronic pain, and wasting syndrome based upon – you guessed it – anecdotal evidence. . . . The feds would like to keep any evidence that reefer is an Rx anecdotal – no peer-reviewed, double-blind studies here – as it bolsters their case that there's no scientific proof that pot works for anything except getting people high. It's the evil weed. . . As proof, the DEA touts the following from a 1999 scientific report: It states that " . . . there is little future in smoked marijuana as a medically approved medication." . . . The report was prepared by the Institute of Medicine (IOM), part of the independent National Academies of Science. Interestingly, the feds lifted that quote from deep in the report. But perhaps more telling is that only one sentence later, the report says: "The personal medical use of smoked marijuana – regardless of whether or not it is approved – to treat certain symptoms is reason enough to advocate clinical trials to assess the degree to which the symptoms or course of diseases are affected." . . . The IOM backed that up with several strong recommendations that medical marijuana should be thoroughly studied – you know, like scientists study every other treatment under the sun. . . . To date, that hasn't happened. . . . Most psych meds work quite well for an estimated 60 percent to 70 percent of patients. It's the remaining 30 percent to 40 percent who are in a sketchier situation. If the approved meds don't work at all or barely work their alleged magic, where are you supposed to turn? . . . So let's assume that weed works for a minority of the mentally ill. Doctors usually come back with the assertion that pot has too many side effects, such as respiratory ailments, to even consider its use. I wonder what universe they live in. Long-term use of psych meds themselves carries a host of side effects, which have been poorly evaluated in long-term studies – kidney and liver damage chief among them, along with nausea, weight gain, sexual dysfunction, sleep interference, and hair loss. And they talk about the side effects of marijuana? By comparison, pot's side effects are almost minimal. So, I'll take that medical marijuana any day – I'd simply like to do it legally.

. . . Read more!


posted by LoZo 5:15 PM

 

Kerry Loves NARCS
(Matt Taibbi, New York Press, August 18 - 24, 2004)
I urge them to consider a few things about the Kerry campaign. It has a few features that have been commented on very little in public. For one, it's crawling with narcs. . . . There is a fiction being perpetuated in the media that the Democratic Party is "more united than ever," that "the whole party has been energized" by the mission of defeating George Bush. (I think the reality is that the would-be dissenters are simply too depressed to argue.) A corollary to this assumption is the alleged reason for this unity, which is that, apart from Iraq, there were virtually no differences between any of the candidates who ran for the nomination in the last year. . . . Howard Dean told me in the plainest language possible that he did not think that nonviolent drug offenders should go to jail. "I mean, if you're selling heroin in a school zone, that's maybe something you should go to jail for, but otherwise, it's a medical issue," he said. . . . Dean explained to me that since most drug laws were state laws, his likely strategy as president for clearing the prisons would be to provide block grants to states that develop alternatives to incarceration for nonviolent drug offenders. . . . What kind of people were you likely to find on the Dean plane? A lot of ex-Clinton types, true, but also people like Kurt Schmoke, the former Yale classmate of Dean's and mayor of Baltimore, who once called the Drug War "our domestic Vietnam" and was the first major politician in the country to advocate the decriminalization of drugs. . . . Who would you find hanging around the Kerry campaign? Forget about people like Weiner, who just showed up uninvited. One of the constants of the Kerry plane was a guy named David Morehouse, who is a senior political advisor to Kerry. Morehouse, like Weiner, is a former ONDCP heavy. He was once the number-two man in the agency behind Barry McCaffrey. Just a few days after Super Tuesday, he explained to me with pride that he had been involved with the planning of many of the ONDCP's most celebrated p.r. campaigns. . . . "Like the fried-egg thing?" I said. . . . "Well, yes, the fried-egg thing, and some others," he said. . . . Morehouse said he left the ONDCP before the plan to plant hidden anti-drug messages in the scripts of tv shows like Friends and E.R. went into action, but admitted he had been there during the planning of these programs. . . . These are the kinds of people Kerry hangs out with: the fried-egg guy. . . . And how about Kerry's likely replacement for Tom Ridge? Rand Beers, Kerry's Homeland Security advisor, is one of the most zealous and remorseless narcs in American history. As undersecretary of state for international drug enforcement under Clinton, Beers signed off on a defoliating program in South America in which a substance similar to Agent Orange was sprayed over would-be coca fields along the Colombian-Ecuadorian border. When an environmental group filed suit on behalf of Ecuadorian peasants who claimed—with the support of the Red Cross—that the sprays had caused the destruction of all crops as well as severe birth defects in humans and livestock, Beers responded by insinuating that the plaintiffs had ties to al Qaeda through the Colombian FARC rebels. . . . But heck, at least he's not George Bush. Right?

[COMMENT: Based on the people Kerry surrounds himself with, I'm not so sure he's even a kinder, gentler Bush. Maybe he isn't quite as insane as little Bush, but don't count on things getting better until the System itself is replaced.]

. . . Read more!


posted by LoZo 10:26 AM

 

Walter Cronkite Says Let's End the War on Drugs
(Walter Cronkite, Centre Daily Times, 06 August 2004)
In the midst of the soaring rhetoric of last week's Democratic Convention, more than one speaker quoted Abraham Lincoln's first inaugural address, invoking "the better angels of our nature." . . . Well, there is an especially appropriate task awaiting those heavenly creatures: a long-overdue reform of our disastrous "war on drugs." We should begin by recognizing its costly and inhumane dimensions. . . . Much of the nation, in one way or another, is victimized by this failure, including, most notably, the innocents, whose exposure to drugs is greater than ever. . . . This is despite the fact that more than 500,000 people are housed in federal and state prisons and local jails on drug offenses. Clearly, no punishment could be too severe for that portion of them who were kingpins of the drug trade and who ruined so many lives. But, by far, the majority of these prisoners are guilty of only minor offenses, such as possessing small amounts of marijuana. That includes people who used it only for medicinal purposes. The cost to maintain this great horde of prisoners is more than $10 billion annually. . . . And that's just part of the cost of this war on drugs: The federal, state and local drug-control budgets last year added up to almost $40 billion. [COMMENT: Can anyone think of other ways in which to spend $40 BILLION dollars of our tax money?] . . . These figures were amassed by the Drug Policy Alliance, one of the foremost national organizations seeking to bring reason to the war on drugs and reduce substantially those caught in the terrible web of addiction. . . . Women are the fastest-growing segment of the U.S. prison population, with almost 80 percent of them incarcerated for drug offenses. . . . The deep perversity of the system lies in the fact that women with the least culpability often get the harshest sentences. . . . Unlike the guilty drug dealer, they often have no information to trade for a better deal from prosecutors and might end up with a harsher sentence than the dealer gets. . . . Nonviolent first offenders, male and female, caught with only small amounts of a controlled substance frequently are given prison sentences of five to 10 years or more. . . . As a result, the number of nonviolent offenders in the nation's prisons is filling them to overflowing, literally. . . . The resulting overcrowding is forcing violent felons onto the streets with early releases. . . . The Drug Policy Alliance also points out other important areas of injustice in the present enforcement system. . . . For instance, people of color -- blacks and Hispanics -- are far more likely to be jailed for drug offenses than others. . . . And college students caught in possession of very small amounts of illegal substances are denied student loans and even food stamps. . . . The alliance and other organizations are working to reform and reframe the war on drugs. And they are finding many judges on their side, who are rebelling against this cruel system. . . . We can expect no federal action during the congressional hiatus in activity ahead of the November elections, but it would be of considerable help if, across the country, campaigning politicians put this high on their promises of legislative action, much sooner than later.

. . . Read more!


posted by LoZo 9:53 AM